In the excitement, I had forgotten all about my punishment. I saw Helen saying good-bye to a crowd of guests at the drawing room door, and I wondered whether she had not forgotten it too. I thought that if I could slip up to my room, I might escape altogether. I tried, but Helen saw me trying to disappear, and cried out pleasantly, "You mustn't go yet, Denise dear."
She continued saying good-bye to her girlfriends as I stood by her side. I felt a cold thrill of erotic trepidation as I considered what sort of new torment Helen had concocted for me. The fearful anticipation was nearly as painful as the canings I had received earlier. I shuddered with delight remembering the warm pain that shot through me as I had been caned and spanked. In considering my evening thus far, I began to grow excited anew. I felt the familiar pull at my leather pouch as my cock began to engorge with hope.
All the guests went at last. Helen took me firmly by the hand. "Come with me," she said. Only Lady Hartley, Miss. Priscilla, and Lady Hartley's daughter were left in the drawing room. Helen touched a spring in the wall and a panel slid aside, showing another room of which I had not guessed the existence. The house had been greatly altered during the years of my absence.
"This, Denise," said Helen with a cold smile of anticipation, "is the punishment room."
Lady Hartley followed Helen, Miss. Priscilla, and myself into the punishment room. It was a small room, furnished prettily with a bright fire glowing on the hearth. Helen closed the panel as soon as we had entered and at once it appeared that the room had no door to it. It was decorated in mahogany and white satin. On the floor was a thick carpet that made walking luxurious. The walls were all thickly padded with white satin and the light was only admitted through a skylight over which, at this moment, heavy curtains of white velvet were drawn.
This room was a room for punishment. At a first glance no one would have guessed that. At a second, one would have noticed some sinister particulars. Across the ceiling a grooved gilt wheel ran on a strong rail and from the groove of the wheel, a thick strong gold rope descended. The wheel was worked by a small lever in the wall, and at this moment was in a corner of the ceiling with the rope tied to a hook. On the ottomans and chairs, I noticed steel rings and bars, and one long flat sofa was furnished at the end with a pair of sticks. There were cases with glass doors fixed against the walls; glancing into one, I saw a stand of bamboo canes, into another a stand of birches daintily tied with blue and pink satin ribbons, and into a third, handcuffs and fetters and irons of all kinds in polished steel. I was afraid. But what most terrified me was a mahogany chair raised an inch or two from the ground on a solid frame. It was luxuriously padded and cushioned in white satin. Yet for some reason it appalled me.
"Sit down, dear," said Helen pushing me toward the awful chair. I advanced timidly and mounted the frame. I sat down in the wicked chair. Helen fixed a strong leather strap round my waist, buckling it tightly behind the chair. Other straps were attached, and these she fastened over my shoulders, drawing them tightly under each arm. My body and bust were thus securely imprisoned. The chair was furnished with short arms thickly padded in white satin, and an inch or two beyond the extremities of the arms, two strange square boxes of glass were supported on steep pedestals fixed into the frame of the chair. On the sides of these boxes, facing the arms of the chair, were holes thickly padded with white satin for the wrists, the upper part of the glass sliding upward in grooves to admit the hands. The other sides and the bottom of the boxes were covered with looking glass. The top surfaces of the boxes like the sides facing the chair were of glass. Helen lifted up the sliding portions of the glass.
"Lay your arms flat upon the arms of the chair, Denise darling, so that your hands are in the glass boxes," she said in her most honeyed accents. "The palms of your gloved hands uppermost dear."
I obeyed her in dreadful alarm. Lady Hartley looked on in delighted curiosity, while Miss. Priscilla strapped down my elbows and forearms with leather straps to the arms of the chair. My hands were quite inside the glass boxes. Helen then slid down the upper pieces of glass, and made them fast by locking a steel bar along the tops. My wrists were now hermetically imprisoned in the glass pillories.
In front of me, at the end of the frame, supported also upon steel pedestals, was a bigger box of the same make as the boxes for the hands. Only in this bigger box there were holes for the ankles a little apart from each other and raised so that, with my feet in the boxes, they would be in a straight line with my knees as I sat in the chair.
"Raise your legs dear, and insert your pretty feet," said Helen. She flung back my skirt, exposing my silk-stockinged legs, my garters, and even the frills that decorated my knees. Timidly I raised my legs and inserted my feet into the box, letting my legs rest in the grooves made for them, while Helen held up the upper slide of glass. As soon as my legs were in position she slid down and secured the glass, tightly fitting me into this strange pair of glass stocks.
My legs fitted very tightly into the holes just where the calves began to swell, so that my ankles as well as my feet were enclosed in the glass boxes. Then Helen, by means of a little silver knob on the outside of each box, drew out the mirrors that formed the bottoms of the boxes, and disclosed shallow cavities underneath. At once, from these cavities a brown dust whirled out and flew about the boxes as if driven by a wind. The brown dust settled on my shining white gloves, my smart glistening slippers, my gleaming stockings of silk. I could move my fingers. I could also work my toes and insteps up and down, though I could not twist my feet from side to side. I worked both hands and feet to shake the dust off in vain, and then I felt two or three sharp pricks on my insteps and other pricks on the palms of my hands at the small opening of the gloves. I shook my hands and feet more violently and then I began to feel the pricks all over my ankles and feet wherever my stockings were open-worked, and all over my hands too. Meanwhile the little clouds of brown dust spun about the boxes.
A suspicion of the truth dawned upon me. I was seized with a dreadful irritation wherever the dust touched my flesh. I could not lean forward, for I was strapped firmly back in my chair. But I fixed my eyes upon my twisting fingers, my twitching feet, and I discovered the truth.
"Oh, Oh!" I cried. "Helen, the specks of brown dust are fleas! My stockings are full of fleas! Oh! They're torturing me. It's horrible."
And in a frenzy I worked my feet; I twisted and clenched my fingers. It was all in vain. My ankles, my insteps, my hands were at the mercy of these obscene insects and they were devouring me.
Lady Hartley was in raptures.
"What a delightful punishment for a pretty, disobedient girl!" she cried. "To tie her into a chair in her lovely evening frock and then to give her satin-slippered feet and slender little ankles in their exquisite stockings to fleas to devour and bite! I think you are wonderfully clever, Helen."
Helen smiled in acknowledgment of the praise.
"It is, at all events, an appropriate punishment," she answered modestly. "Denise is being punished for her vanity in making a coquettish display of her little feet. To hand them over in their finery to fleas seemed to me the best way of teaching her humility." She looked at me pointedly.
They stood and watched me with vicious joy as I writhed and twisted in my bonds. The fleas were driving me mad. They got inside my stockings, down under my slippers, round my ankles and bit me terribly. They were ravenous. The fleas were inside my gloves, between my fingers, everywhere. My feet and hands twisted in their glass prisons. The mirrors reflected back to me the irony of my flashing buckles, my dainty bows and heels, and the tightly fitting elegant long gloves.